The children being left behind by America’s online schooling
Like most children in the US, Juana* hasn't been to school in two months. Her mother, Dilma, left school after first grade and doesn't speak English. Until recently, the family in Oakland, California, only had a very simple cell phone they used to make calls home to family in Guatemala.
Without a computer to connect to her teachers and friends, Juana started to fall behind. While other children in the US were having full lessons on Zoom, she spent the first month of quarantine just practicing the alphabet and learning to count in Spanish. It was only a few weeks ago-well into the shutdown, which in California began March 16-that Juana finally received a school-issued Chromebook. But she still didn't have internet access. The family didn't have a wireless connection at home, and Dilma had never connected to the internet on her cell phone before.
It was Juana's teacher, Sara Shepich, who figured out how to get them online. Since mid-March, Shepich has spent hours on the phone with her students' parents, local internet providers, her school's administration, and her union attempting to get Chromebooks and Wi-Fi for her students and their families. If she's lucky, she's able to talk to students through WhatsApp or FaceTime. In the month immediately after the crisis hit, almost none of them had been fully set up with a Chromebook and internet connectivity.
The coronavirus crisis is exacerbating the long-standing digital divide in the US, highlighting unequal access to technology. When schools were ordered to close, underfunded districts suddenly found themselves struggling to equip students stuck at home. As every week of school closures passes, many poor students are falling further behind.
For Shepich's students and their families the problem is made worse because they are from a part of Guatemala that speaks Mam, a Mayan language that has little in common with Spanish. Many of the families are not only undocumented but also lack the communication skills and paperwork necessary to register for internet access at home.
The last day of school was very crazy," Shepich says. At 9 a.m., our principal got word that we wouldn't be coming back for a couple of weeks. We had a Google form with teachers writing down what kids should do for two to four weeks"-most of it inaccessible for many of Shepich's students-and the administration trying to get more information. Other schools sent home Chromebooks, but I was putting this packet of four sheets together with the website for kindergarten, throwing books at them as they left for the day."
Shepich's district is just a stone's throw from Silicon Valley, where tech companies had promised early on to distribute free technology. Google, in particular, promised to donate 4,000 Chromebooks and 100,000 Wi-Fi spots across California. Governor Gavin Newsom praised the company, saying, We need more Googles."
But 4,000 Chromebooks barely make a dent. A recent report from EdSource found that 1.2 million students in California lack access to a device or the internet.